Intense research has been dedicated in recent years to replace fossil fuel and meet the increasing energy needs of modern society. One of the most prominent sources of renewable energy is solar energy which makes use of the virtually inexhaustible energy source, the sun. Photovoltaic research has been growing rapidly in search of inexpensive and environmentally friendly energy conversion and storage systems. Historically, conventional photovoltaics have been expensive due to the complex fabrication procedures and/or high price of raw materials some of which consist of toxic elements. These obstacles have motivated a burgeoning field of research in solar technologies fabricated from fundamentally low-cost materials employing inexpensive fabrication methods.
There has been a recent surge of interest in the solar cell community on the use of perovskites compounds for solar cell device fabrication. In particular, the AMX3 lead based compounds, such as CH3NH3PbI3, have demonstrated cell efficiencies new 20%. This is a major breakthrough in terms of the so-called 3rd generation cell development.